Just wanted to offer a couple thoughts on simple things the YPP community could do to help more people find us (new readers, commenters, new writers, new candidates and new reporters looking for stories, too). The web has created some powerful new tools for helping people to find the site, but it requires participation by users. Fortunately, they are all pretty fun.

I'd like to suggest regulars here consider joining one of these sites to tag your favorite posts in YPP and other great stories and blogs they find around the region. From what I've read on-line, when communities form around certain pages on the sites below and start posting favorites to these things, the attention for the websites expands dramatically. I think we are missing a lot of Philadelphians. Help us change that!

Del.icio.us. This site is so old school it's beautiful. It's just a page for saving favorite links. Do you know what I really love to use Del.icio.us for? If someone sends me a link and I'm working and want to look at it later, I don't have to email it to myself (which I will lose). I save it to my Del.icio.us page.

Stumble Upon. This one is great for people who like to take a break and look at a couple interesting things and then get back to whatever they were doing. Rather than visit the same ole things, it helps you to "stumble upon" something cool. I like to click "Stumble Upon News," which tends to reveal some really underground and intriguing stories that don't make the major dailies. This is also the place where I'm most likely to add my favorite posts (like Mansei's thing on the PPA this morning) to my page in case I want to find them later or send them to friends.

Digg.com. This one seems to be for higher quality links and users who really want to say why they like things. I think the idea of Digg is that users can view links and then sort of vote on how cool they are. So links rise up or sink down. It asks a little more of you to post a link, so I save the best of the best for my Digg page.

I put links to all my pages on these sites at the end of each paragraph above so that if you join you can add me (or if you are already a member). These sites work best when a community of people forms to share links. We are already a community, so we should join together. Add me and I'll add you and expand our collaboration.

Look, this is another great way to participate in YPP, particularly if you're a lurker. Maybe you want to get more involved but you don't want to write and you don't want to comment. You do wish, though, that the writers here would cover certain topics. Well, you could join one of these sites and post the links you wish we'd write about and maybe we will?

Like I said, these are fun sites for web-lovers like us. So don't be shy. Give them a try and definitely add some of your favorite posts from this site when you do!

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ThisTooWillPass.com, treating light matters gravely and grave matters lightly.